What Werewolf the Apocalypse wanted to be, maybe?

[momothefiddler]

My understanding (Werewolf was my first WoD splat and thus my baby but also that was a long time ago) is that the basic idea is that due to an ancestral phobia or whatever, people without enough willpower just straight up refused to believe or acknowledge the existence of werewolves. So it doesn't matter if it's seeing it directly or looking at a photo or a 3d image based on it or hearing a very vivid description, in no case should they believe that it is - or even could be - real, because their brain won't accept that. It's some pseudosciency self-censoring delusion.

And theoretically this could be really great for the Masquerade, but Lunacy is a completely fucked attempt at instituting that, because it does nothing to force people to disbelieve except when they're looking at it, and it does everything to draw attention to the phenomenon. An actual reasonable execution of the base premise I stated above would result in what Prak's been discussing, where someone with WP10 says "guys that video shows a werewolf" and everyone else goes "wow you are imagining videos and that's not good but also you are imagining werewolves and that's super dangerous because reasons here put on this straightjacket forever" because they're reacting irrationally to any challenge to their delusion.

[RadiantPhoenix]

At which point the WP10 person whips out an iphone and shows them the video again, and the other people all run away.

[momothefiddler]

At which point the WP10 person whips out an iphone and shows them the video again, and the other people all run away.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant to argue that this would be in place instead of Lunacy, because

theoretically this could be really great for the Masquerade, but Lunacy is a completely fucked attempt at instituting that

[Fwib]

Wear a T-shirt with a pictures of a werewolf on it, or hang tablets showing werewolf video from your front and back, go on a crime spree!
If you wear a field-of-vision-restricting helmet, it will both allow you to do this with lower WP and stop you setting yourself off (but avoid looking at yourself in reflections)

On the other hand... I forgot this is likely to be in the US ('cos I'm in the UK), where there are lots of guns, which people afflicted with lunacy are liable to use on you... so maybe not.

[edit] See also: Blit, but weaker...

[Username17]

Actually, it occurs to me that it's not impossible to have a sort of masquerade in a modern game. After Sundown actually mentions the sort of masquerade you'd need to use in the era of smartphones, it just doesn't go into detail.

Here's a section from 2nd edition:

It is not simply that the world in After Sundown is our world with a generous sprinkling of monsters, it is a world in which there have been monsters for a very long time. Monsters have been around and doing things for longer than there have been historical records, and so while the high school history courses in this world teach similar subject matter to what they do in ours, supernatural creatures have been involved in actual events the entire time. There are secret histories which are perhaps closer to the truth. How this managed to be the case is not simple, because it happened over the course of thousands of years.

Before the Vow of Silence, there was the Tradition of Misdirection. This was the idea that it was totally fine to show mundane humans that magic existed, but in no way acceptable to let on how it actually worked. Even into Greek and Roman times, it is simply taken for granted in official histories that corpses walked, blood fell from the sky, heroes with divine parents shattered stone walls with their fists, and whole shiploads of soldiers were slaughtered by dragons. Earlier histories are even more mythic. The general opinion of modern scholarship is that these events didn't really happen and are rumors or exaggerations written down into historical records because of a lack of good fact checking. However, according to the secret histories, these events actually represent real supernatural events – with the supernatural creatures of the time spinning elaborate tales not to hide their powers, but to hide the way their powers worked. Herakles almost certainly was a real person with real super strength and near invulnerability, but he probably wasn't the son of the god of lightning. Based on the claim that he restored himself to life by beating Death in a wrestling match, monsters of modern nights conclude that the original Herakles was probably a vampire of some kind.

Supernatural creatures can indeed turn the tide of battle, and had even greater abilities to do so back when armies were smaller and lacked the powerful weapons of the modern world. Still, there have been supernatural creatures in every part of the world, and their presence on the field of battle has usually canceled out. The Aztecs brought Daeva to war, but the Spanish met them in battle with Troglodytes. There was indeed an elite unit of Werewolf women of the SS, but they were slain on the banks of the Volga by Soviet sympathizing Witches. Some secret histories suggest that some of the really remarkable upsets and devastating victories in the historical record may have been helped along by supernatural creatures choosing one side or another. Of course, if you go far enough back in time it was simply assumed that the mighty champions of armies and nations were in some sense supernatural. Seemingly no one at the time thought it strange that Achilles was able to bounce bronze spear points off his skin or that Cú Chulainn would transform into a giant monster while fighting.

Starting in the Dark Ages of Europe, and rapidly spreading through most of the old world, a concerted effort was made to destroy historical records and enforce the Vow of Silence. Human religious teachings of the period encouraged the burning of books and the slaughtering of sages, and the syndicates of the age made sure that records of the existence and weaknesses of supernatural creatures were expunged from tome and mind. At its height, the churches of Europe burned people who so much as suggested that Witches and Vampires were real. For a time, even the words for supernatural creatures were almost completely unknown.

Starting with the printing press, humans found ways to disseminate information faster than agents of the syndicates could destroy them. For a time attempts to double and redouble the burning of knowledge were made. The empires of the Americas burned and their histories of mundane and supernatural alike were turned to ash by the conquering European armies. But this ultimately proved futile, for every manuscript destroyed, two took their place. Dedicated groups of hunters sprung into being and as the age of reason dawned, the systems of science allowed human hunters to acquire enough serviceable information to take down many powerful elders. New strategies were clearly required.

For the last three hundred years or so, the Vow of Silence has for the most part been preserved through a more nuanced form of cover up. Information about supernatural creatures has been suppressed through primary secrecy, through the destruction of existent evidence, and through the deliberate spread of misinformation. Syndicates will work to keep a story from getting out in the first place, and if that fails they'll try to consign it to the memory hole, and if that fails they'll attempt to discredit the story or change the details in retellings so that it no longer points to real supernatural creatures. Over a thousand years after the Vow of Silence replaced the Tradition of Misdirection, a synthesis of sorts has been formed. Though it is still called the Vow of Silence in modern nights.

Even these more advanced techniques are breaking down in the 21st century. The syndicates cannot monitor the entire internet, nor can they track all the phone cameras in circulation. While some success has been had creating false flag videos purporting to show werewolves and demons that are easily debunked as fakes, there are cracks in the system. Enough humans know or suspect enough true information that groups of hunters are starting to mobilize once again. So far, the syndicates have successfully branded such groups as dangerous lunatics, but there is genuine fear that this is a losing battle. Different strategies are being employed in different areas and by different groups.

More creatures than ever before are withdrawing to rural and wilderness areas, keeping their magical nature and strange appetites away from prying eyes through simple isolation. And many others are flocking to the great metropolises, where people mind their own business and people don't think it's weird that their neighbors are weird. Some creatures have taken to infiltrating governments and media outlets to disseminate anti-magical propaganda, while others have taken to simply spreading rumors, innuendo, and lies to propagate irrelevant superstitious beliefs. All of these strategies have had mixed results, and there is concern that the lack of a coherent global strategy ultimately dooms the entire project.